Ryder rolls out new fleet of studio trucks for rent

Ryder has gone Hollywood. The commercial transportation company unveiled this week a new line of rental trucks specialized for the film and entertainment industry in the Los Angeles area.

Two types of trucks are available: a 16-foot “Super Cube” and a 26-foot “Five Ton.”

“Customers have been asking us if we carry the studio trucks for years,” said Mike Gallagher, director of rental, west region, for Ryder (NYSE: R). “We saw an opportunity to provide our customers with another innovative product in Southern California, and we just felt like this was a great product to compliment our diverse fleet of trucks that we already have in the Los Angeles marketplace.”

Ryder operates more than 500 vehicle rental locations across the United States and Canada, with an inventory of close to 30,000 recent-model vehicles. The company has 34 studio trucks for rent—10 of the 16-footers and 24 of the 26-footers. They’ll be available for rent out of the studio-friendly, Burbank-adjacent Glendale location.

In designing the new studio trucks, “we went out and listened to our customers and almost let our customers build the trucks,” Gallagher said. “We wanted to find out what they needed and what they wanted, and this was the feedback we got, so we built them and purchased them just like that.”

Several specs specialize the trucks for the film and entertainment industry:

Studio-size lift gates: Longer and wider than the typical commercial lift gate, the studio lift gates on the new trucks are easier to use.

Attics: Located above the cab, attics provide more cargo capacity.

Belly boxes: Large black toolboxes located underneath the truck between the wheels can be used to hold cabling and wiring.

Tow hitches: Ryder rentals don’t usually come with tow hitches, but the studio rentals do for hauling either a trailer with more equipment or a generator for on-site power needs.

Side doors: New side doors are accessible by steps.

Crew cabs that seat up to six people: The four-door studio trucks can transport a half-dozen crewmembers.

This last feature is especially important for film-industry clients. “One of the most important things is the ability to go on to a site and be able to have enough workers there,” Gallagher said. With the four-door cab, “they can take six people to a site rather than having to take two or three other trucks or a truck and a van behind it. It enables them to move their workforce from site location to site location easily without having multiple pieces of equipment.”

Studios—both the majors and independents—are obvious customers for the new studio trucks, but Ryder may find itself renting to its competitors as well. Companies could use Ryder’s studio trucks to supplement their own fleets when they run out of vehicles.

“We’re always looking for innovative solutions to meet our customers’ needs,” Gallagher said. “We have a wide variety of diverse trucks out there, and we just felt like this was a key addition to supplement. We heard what our customers wanted, and we wanted to give them what they needed.”